Judge orders husband out of 'ancestral home'

A member of the landed gentry worth £10 million has been ordered out of his "ancestral home" in Sussex by a judge.

Anthony Arbuthnot Watkins Grubb must make way for his five children and former wife, Jennifer, who suffers from depression because of his "abusive, domineering and controlling" behaviour.

Lord Justice Wilson gave him just 14 days to leave Mayes House on the Mayes Estate at East Grinstead, after refusing him permission to appeal against the occupation order made in the High Court Family Division.

The appeal judge said Mr Grubb had a "strong sensation of life-time stewardship of the estate which had been in his family for over a century.

"The sensation is in principle wholly admirable but unfortunately, as the (High Court) judge was required to investigate as a result of his defence of the suit for divorce, the sensation of stewardship has expanded within the husband's mind beyond all rational proportion."

The judge said Mr Grubb's stewardship ambitions "infected married life for many years and ultimately destroyed it".

Lord Justice Wilson repeated the findings of High Court judge Her Honour Judge Hughes QC that it was "worthwhile to note the length of time for which the husband has been trying to bully the wife into submission in relation not only to her financial claims following divorce in general but to her claims referable to accommodation in particular".

The appeal judge added: "From an early stage of the marriage, particularly when the wife conceived more children than the husband had apparently expected her to conceive, he had sought to insist that she should make an equal contribution to the educational costs of the children, albeit, if necessary, by initial borrowing from himself.

"So, if you please, he had purported to create a loan account in which he had recorded the increasing level of indebtedness on the part of the wife to him in that respect. The response of the wife to the extraordinary degree of harassment to which the husband had thus subjected her was, with hesitation, regret and apprehension, to issue her petition for divorce."

The High Court judge had found that Mr Grubb's behaviour had left the wife suffering from depression and she needed separate accommodation.